Thursday, April 7, 2011

Keeping the rather interesting fact in mind that the primary (and probably, the only) reader of this blog is me- myself, I’ve decided to come up with another perfectly self-centered post. Let’s just say, it’s meant to be a preservative to my current self, amidst the ever-changing state of things and mind.

Either this will jog your memory, or it won’t.

One of your articles has appeared in a local magazine. You start reading, with a feeling of utter satisfaction, pitying the inferior beings around you, and then suddenly, the sky comes crashing down. The cause of this unprecedented state of super-shock is simple; you've come across a fragment which goes like this- “…and so the came up the stairs…”

If this satanic robbery of a ‘y’ causes no little gulp of terror or increase in pulse, you should skip this post immediately. By all means, thank your stars that you’re not a nitpicker or a stickler; that you are suitable to live in a world where no one cares.

For any true perfectionist, the presence of a ‘the’ in place of ‘they’ would initiate a horrifying private emotional process similar to the early stages of mental illness, though significantly accelerated. At first, the mind goes numb. Within seconds, numbness gives way to distress, distress to agony, and agony to fury. Finally, fury gives way to hopelessness, on realization that the print is real and eyes are mostly truthful.

That was merely an example. The perils of the innocent mind of a perfectionist are endless. The world is full of flaws and asymmetry, both within and without oneself. Some people are born to suffer. Only last month, I had taken a painful 20mins’ auto ride to Akash’s house in order to publish “Returning Home” (my last post). I was quite happy till the glorious moment when I actually returned home, and discovered, from cell, that the starting had a serious grammatical flaw. Yeah, returning home isn’t very delighting sometimes. Naturally, the very next day, I was back at his place under the excuse of collecting movies.

It’s tough to be a stickler under the present circumstances. Be one for grammar and punctuation, and you’ll see floating sentences such as “hey!!! hows u…????///”, all around yourself. Be one for punctuality and you’ll end up spending half your lifetime waiting around for other people to show up. Be one for cleanliness and… okay, I shouldn’t start describing Indian streets here; my country owes me that much, at least, for bringing home the World Cup.

Everywhere one stares, there are marks of neglect and indifference. When we try to point out a missing ‘y’, demanding correction, we are often aggressively advised to “get a life” by people who, astonishingly, exhibit no indication of having lives themselves. Obviously, we become introverts and refrain from revealing our insights, under such unreceptive conditions. There’s little hope for sympathy for pedants, as we are not the first people one feels sorry for. To be precise, we are a bunch of unattractive geeky maniacs, who have learned to tackle the cruel world by pulling the zip over their anxious lips, restricting every form of free movement.

To any secondary reader, who has taken the pains to sink down this far into the post and felt any hint of self-recognition anywhere among the lengthy jumble of words, you have a comrade in me. To others, uh… I don’t intend to live twice.

P.S. My apologies, but I've been randomly picking up writing styles from authors and article writers. It’s completely subconscious; I was amazed myself on discovering the striking similarity in patterns. As they say, originality is a thing developed over time, and I’ll keep awaiting mine, for the time being.